Thursday, 9 January 2014

My love/hate relationship with booktubing

I love booktubing. I've been standing (or sitting, if I'm feeling lazy) in front of a camera talking to myself since July 2013. Since then, I have gained 150 YouTube subscribers (or more. This is a scheduled post...), approximately 23% more confidence (pfft, that's a guess. Who listens in maths anyway?) and a lovely tripod so I don't have to balance my camera precariously on a pile of books and a shoe anymore. Actually, sometimes it was a pile of books, a shoe and a pack of printer paper, and occasionally a cardboard box and some DVDs, but that's besides the point.

Filming is fun. I spend a little while getting ready (HD picks up on everything...) and preparing the frame and the tripod and whatever, and then I film. In the first couple of months I felt really awkward about it, but I think I'm starting to be myself now. I used to be really careful about how I acted (my grandparents watch my vlogs, y'know), and I still am, but it's easier to be myself. People say I'm funny even when I'm not trying to be (hey, I'll take that as a compliment) and sometimes I probably come across as sarcastic but that's just me.

I've seen so many book bloggers say they want to try booktubing, but they lack the confidence and they wouldn't know what to vlog about. My advice? Just do it. Grab a camera, balance it somewhere, and talk. There's a saying that I live by, and that is, "If you don't ask, the answer will always be no." I don't know who said it but it's true for a lot of circumstances. If you don't try booktubing, you'll never know what it's like. You might enjoy it. You might become one of the popular booktubers. You could meet your soon-to-be best friends through it, and it could become your new favorite hobby.You could become open to exciting, new opportunities, but you'll never know any of this unless you try.

Your first videos are going to be awkward. They're going to be embarrassing, and they're going to make you cringe later on, but that's what the 'Set to private' button is for on YouTube, which you can click after about a month and no one will notice the video has gone... Booktubing is so liberating because you're in front of a camera showing who you are. People get to know you, your voice, your mannerisms, the way your eyes light up when you're excited about a book.

I love it. But I hate it.

Editing is stressful, or it is for me, at least. I'll pop my SD card into the laptop and boom, files become corrupted, clips are lost in cyberspace, your voice loses sync with the footage and you realise that artificial lighting was so not the way to go.

Somehow, you manage to edit your video so it's kind of presentable. Ish. You upload it to YouTube and, oh, look at that, it's made the video upside down. Oh well, nothing you can do about it now it's public and it's already had 38 views.

But practice makes perfect. Personally, after five months of booktubing, I'm still learning and experimenting. Some of my videos will be really orange *cough* bookshelf tour *cough* and some of them might be far from HD quality, but you'll have to bear with me. I'll get there in the end. And if you're a booktuber going through the same things, you'll get there too. And if you've never filmed a vlog but you want to, do it. I found another quote (this post is turning into utter cheese): "I'm not in the business of denying myself simple pleasures." Basically, if you want to vlog, do it. We're all supportive people and vlogging is actually really fun when you get into it. So what if you don't like your voice? Or if you don't like your face? Or if you don't get much natural lighting? I hate my voice and my face (I'm actually the most insecure person you'll ever meet) but you are your own worst critic and I guarantee lots of people will love your voice and your face (wow, that sentence sounded creepier than I meant it to...)

Booktubing is good because you actually learn things about yourself that you had never noticed before. For example, I never realised how British I sound until I watched my own video the other day. I also have a habit of bringing my hair forward and I stick my thumb-up a lot if I'm excited...or if I want you to click the little thumbs-up button under the video...

You can see I have a love/hate relationship with booktubing, but I love it more than I hate it... at least give vlogging a try! Upload it, get some opinions and go from there. It'll be worth it, trust me. :)

As you can probably tell, this blog post wasn't planned. It just kind of came out, which is why I rambled...but you get what I was trying to say, right?

18 year old book blogger who aspires to work in journalism and/or publishing, and dreams of one day seeing her own work on bookshelves around the world. Amber has been running The Mile Long Bookshelf single-handedly since 2009.

21 comments:

I actually started BookTubing and then found out about book blogs. For various personal reasons I took a hiatus from BookTube but I plan on returning soon now that I have a nice new camcorder, tripod, and memory card :)

I have been thinking about doing some book tube things, however, I'll probably make tons and tons of mistakes in my English and meeeeehh. It will probably sound pretty horrible and I don't want that. So for now, I'll just stick to my blog I think.

Great post, Amber! I love that you started booktubing! I start my day off by watching You Tube videos as I get ready and as soon as I refresh my subscription feed, there's more videos for me to enjoy. By doing this I've picked up a lot of vlogging tips and the way to do certain things, but I think I would still sound SO awkward! But the main reasons are because of the lack of time I have on top of school, and because I'd get to paranoid about someone from school finding my channel... I get scared enough as it is when people say "Oh I found your blog" *Zoe hyperventilates* :PANYWAY. You've definitely encouraged me to start thinking about it! I love who you sprinkled in the inspirational quotes :)

Thanks Zoe! I do that too, except I end my day with YouTube videos instead of starting it that way xD I think you'd be really good at booktubing, you should definitely give it a go if you get time. And why thank you, every post needs a quote from Augustus, right? ;)

I love booktubing, even though I haven't officially started. I totally agree with everything you said though! It's often hard enough for me to get through taping one video without having to deal with corrupted files and oops, I actually didn't press the record button! One thing I've hard trouble with is the editing. I don't have a mac which means I don't have iMovie and for some reason, Windows Movie Maker always makes my videos turn out really horribly with strange beeping noises. I think I'd like to edit my videos but at this point, it's just easier to shoot it at once. I have to look back into it though...

Anyway, great post! I love the booktubing community, and am so eager to join it.

this was such a great post! :D I don't really notice the lighting in your videos that much, I'm more interested in what you're talking about etc!:D You're an awesome booktuber! I do want to booktube but I'm so awkward and I'm not even sure if my parents would allow me xD-Georgia

This is such a fantastic post! I don't know if I could ever booktube, i think it'd be too nerve-wracking for me, unfortunately. You're channel is my favourite. It's so real, and honest,a nd yes, you should definitely take thata as a compliment, because you're sarcasm is very entertaining. Keep booktubing! :)

I absolutely loved this post, Amber, it really reflected your personality! Yes, you should take being funny as a good thing, your videos are great! I could never book-tube, I have tried, and failed, at filming for a day, and I just had clips of me laughing at myself. Oops.

I really want to do vlogging this year and I'm thinking of doing it for my blogoversary so I can add it as a new feature. This is a really good post because it encourages more people to do vlogging! Great inspirational video but I see it is difficult with all the editing too.

Despite being forced to use crappy Windows Media Maker (it crashes. a lot) I actually really like video editing. It took me awhile to get there but at least I'm there now :) Also, I've found that when I first started booktubing I was overthinking everything which made me enjoy it less. Now that I've relaxed a little bit, I'm enjoying it more and I don't come across as quite as awkward. Hopefully. Probably not actually :)

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